autumn recipes

Baked Apples Stuffed with Cranberry Sauce, Cinnamon and Raisins

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While this fragrant and flavorful dessert needs no excuse appear on your menu, if you are in the USA, the weekend after Thanksgiving is an ideal time to make it, to use up whatever cranberry side dish you might have left over. This particular batch was made with the last of the Cranberry Relish á la Persephone that I had concocted on November 22, 2023.

Step One: Line a baking pan (or a cast iron skillet) with baking parchment. Wash and dry some sound (firm and unbruised) organically raised apples, core them, and place them on the parchment. Figure one small apple for each two tablespoonsful of cranberry sauce, relish, etc. that you have on hand. If you will be baking big apples, figure 3 tablespoonsful per apple.

Then pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.





Step Two: Make the filling and fill the apples. The amount of sweetner depends on what sort of cranberry side dish you are using. If it’s a cranberry sauce that is already sweetened, you might not need to add any sweetner at all. The trick is to balance the natural sourness of the cranberries with enough sweetness to make a satisfying dessert. In the case of my cranberry relish, made with cooked whole cranberries, I kept mixing in half-droppers-full of stevia liquid extract until the sweet/sour balance was pleasing to my palate. You might prefer using another sweetner – say, maple syrup, honey, brown sugar, agave syrup or monk fruit.

Then I add raisins and powdered cinnamon (also to taste), and let the mixture rest so the cinnamon and raisins soak up some of the liquid.

Then I use a narrow spoon to transport the filling into the cores of the apples, pushing it down as I fill.




Step 3: Bake the apples. First trim the excess baking parchment, so that it does not stand above the sides of the baking dish.

Bake until the apples are soft enough that you can easily insert a fork.


Step 4: Cool the apples (at least to the point that no one will burn themselves taking the first bite!) Fresh from the oven is when they are the most fragrant, but they are also delicious at room temperature, and can be accompanied by scoop of vanilla ice cream, a whipped cream topping, or a glass of eggnog.




Step 5: Serve the apples. The sweet, spicy syrup generated in the bottom of the pan during baking can be drizzled over the apples once they are plated.




Warm and Vivid Autumnal Soup

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I took a day off from setting up my online store, and made an vivid and warm autumnal soup.

Then, I poured some into a bowl and took this photo, with two indigenous folk art spoons from the town of Pasto in the southern central Andes in Colombia. I bought them as a gift for my mother in 1972, who displayed them on the wall of her dining room until she transitioned in 2007, after which they resumed their duties, watching over the dining rooms I have used since then.

This recipe was improvised as I went, but inspired by recipes I had tried previously. I am fortunate to live where I can easily obtain organically grown ingredients, and I used them here exclusively.

I soaked a cup of red lentils overnight in four cups of purified water. The next day I rinsed off the white foam they had produced, placed them in a large pot and added water that stood twice as high as the lentils. I brought them to a boil, then removed the lid of the pot and turned the flame down to the minimum, and kept them simmering, stirring occasionally until the lentils were cooked soft. When the water was about to get low enough that the lentils might stick to the pot, I added a can of coconut cream, and stirred it frequently while it simmered another 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, I sliced and seeded a small butternut squash and steamed the pieces until they were soft. When they were cool enough to handle, I scooped the cooked squash out of the skins and into the jar of the food processor/high speed blender. I added a cup of the water from steaming the squash, and liquified them.

Then I blended the lentil/coconut cream mixture and a small can of tomato paste into the squash puree.

Finally, I chopped small and sauteed in coconut oil at low heat three cloves of garlic and a half of a red onion. While they were softening and releasing their aromas, I added two teaspoons of cumin seed powder, a teaspoon of a good-smelling masala blend, and two teaspoons of powdered tumeric root. When it was all fragrant and soft, I added the entire contents of the sautee pan to the rest of the ingredients in the food processor, and blended it until it was smooth.